let it all burn down, burn it to the ground | October Catch-All

[aelwyn_aberration]

Who: Aelwyn Abernant and you, perhaps.
When: October, early November.
Where: In dreams, ADI, around Gloucester.
Summary: Local girl turned 20, completely forgot about it. Also created an imaginary hellscape within her unconscious mind and participated in the murder of a girl even younger than her. Event prompts + some slice of life prompts.
Warnings: Emotional abuse and neglect, severe sleep deprivation, torture, burning, destruction of whole cities, depression, underaged drinking, hypersexuality.

Comments

[aelwyn_aberration]

Not particularly well, I would say. But we've had mutual acquaintances.

[If she were less distant and emotionally fragile, she might even say mutual friends. Meredith, Jeff, Tim...

Well. All gone now. Probably all dead.]

September... I suppose that's a little better than arriving in October. God, I hate Halloween.

Did you kill her in your dream? The little girl behind it all? I did.

[conning]

[He winces, first at the mutual acquaintances, then at the frank admission of murder. Dream murder, but still.]

No. I didn't find her. [He doesn't know if he'd have been able to attack her if he had found her. Maybe it's just as well.]

I used to like it. Halloween. But between this one and the last one, not so much.

[After a moment, he holds a hand out toward the bottle.] Mind sharing?

[aelwyn_aberration]

[She offers him the bottle wordlessly. The alcohol helps her feel less like she has to sanitize her personality, so he's getting the frank admissions of murder unfortunately.]

We never had it in my world. There was Harvest's Eve... but that was a human holiday that my parents sneered at.

Killing her felt horrible. It always feels horrible.

[conning]

[He cleans the mouth of the bottle with a handkerchief, as though that will do anything for germs, before taking a swig. At least he's polite enough to then also wipe his own germs off just as ineffectually before offering it back.]

You've killed before. [Not really a question, but an invitation to talk about it if she needs to. She's the one who brought it up.]

[aelwyn_aberration]

Is that surprising? [She can't imagine it is. Although, people in other worlds are... weird about killing.] I sunk a ship. With a lot of people on board. Because I was scared.

[She takes a swig of the vodka directly, letting her mouth and throat burn.]

Have you?

[conning]

[He shakes his head.] No. I've hurt people, but I've never killed anyone directly. Indirectly, yes. I have something of a body count there.

[He can say it with a mostly-neutral tone, though internally it makes him sick.]

People do a lot of things because they're scared. [It's not an offer of forgiveness or understanding, really. He's not arrogant enough any more to think either one of those things would be welcome.] People do a lot of awful things for worse reasons.

[aelwyn_aberration]

[She scoffs. It's not forgiveness but it's not something she can accept either. Worse reasons? She had no reason. That's what makes her so horrific.]

Reasons don't matter. I could come up with some ideological cause if I tried, my partner did. But I never really gave a shit, I guess. I just wanted... something.

[She smiles thinly. She's aware that she was just a kid, scared and lonely and desperate, but she still can't bring herself to forgive that kid either.]

Doesn't matter now though. We're a long way from home.

[conning]

It matters. [The why of things matter. Maybe not to anyone else, in the end, but as a part of himself--his whys have always mattered to him.

A pause, then:]

Hungry?